The Cowboy Takes a Bride (13 page)

M
ariah didn’t have much money left and she really didn’t want to rack up debt on her one and only credit card. Normally, she kept it strictly for emergencies. But what was more urgent than buying clothes that would help her fit in and land a job? A uniform of sorts, if you will.

She remembered the Western wear store she passed on the way into town and headed there. The cowbell over the door clanged when she walked in. Dazed at the array of cowboy apparel options stretched out before her, Mariah stood there a moment, taking it all in.

From the circular racks of Western wear attire a red-haired, pigtailed woman a few years younger than Mariah materialized. An acre of freckles carpeted her nose, and her lips glistened with a fresh sheen of gloss. Mariah could smell the heavy strawberry scent from where she stood.

The woman possessed a round happy face, a button nose, and almond-shaped eyes the color of unripe olives. She wore an orange denim skirt that skimmed the top of her cowboy boots, a black turtleneck pullover sweater, and a pink suede vest trimmed with white faux fur.

“Howdy!” she exclaimed, “Welcome to Western Wear Palooza. Name’s Prissy Purdue at your service.”

“Um . . . hello, Prissy.”

Prissy advanced on her, the bracelet at her wrist adorned with silver cowboy-theme charms jangling merrily. She grabbed Mariah by the arm and tugged in the direction she wanted her to go. “C’mon, c’mon, you gotta see the new stuff we just got in.”

Swept along by Prissy, the force of nature, Mariah found herself pulled into the depths of the store.

“Look at this. I just opened the box.” Prissy let go of Mariah’s arm and lifted the flaps on a big cardboard box sitting in the middle of the floor. “Will you get a load of these?”

Pigtails bobbing, Prissy started yanking out cow-print purses and leather belts and rubber rain boots with horses printed on them. “Aren’t they adorable. You can seriously get your cowgirl on with accessories like these. Which do you like best?”

Prissy held up two belt buckles. One was silver, embossed with the words: “Texas to the Bone.” The other was gold and had the raised three-dimensional image of a man riding a cutting horse. “I know, I know, the cutter belt buckle is obligatory in Jubilee and gold is shinier than silver, but the Texas to the Bone is just so
badass
.”

The other woman was yammering so fast that Mariah wondered if she was ever going to take a breath.

Prissy glanced down. “OMG!”

Startled, Mariah followed her gaze, saw a snakeskin belt on the floor, and for a horrifying second thought it was an actual snake. She jumped sideways.

“Are those Manolo Blahniks?”

“Huh?”

“Your shoes.” Prissy said the words like she was exhaling a prayer and sank to her knees to inspect Mariah’s shoes. “Manolo Blahniks.”

She pronounced them
Man-ooo-loo Block-niks
, but Mariah didn’t correct her. “Yes.”

“Can I touch them?” Prissy’s eyes had taken on a rapturous glaze.

“Um . . . I guess.” Mariah slipped off the stilettos and handed them over.

Prissy petted them like they were cats. “We’re the same size. Seven medium. You,” she announced with conviction, “are not from Jubilee.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re from a big city.”

“I am,” Mariah admitted, wondering what she’d walked into.

“I was born and raised in Jubilee, but I have dreams.”

“Big-city dreams?”

“Oh no,” Prissy said. “I love Jubilee. I just want to wear a pair of Manolo Blahniks at my wedding. I mean I love Western wear and all. As you can see it’s my life.” She waved a hand at the store. “But sometimes a girl just wants something sexy. Am I right?”

“You’re getting married?” Mariah asked.

“I am.” Prissy flashed a one-quarter-carat diamond engagement ring and grinned. “Paul asked me last night. He took me out to eat at the Mesquite Spit and he had them put it in my banana pudding. It was the most romantic thing ever.” Prissy sighed dreamily. “We’re planning to get married the first weekend in December.”

At the mention of a wedding, Mariah’s ears had pricked up. “Why so fast? You hardly have time to plan.”

“Oh, I’m not pregnant or anything if that’s what you’re thinking. Paul’s getting deployed to Afghanistan after Christmas and we want to be married before he goes.”

“Sounds like a great reason to fast-track the ceremony.”

“Fast-track.” Prissy beamed. “That sounds so
in the know
.”

“I am . . .
was
. . . a wedding planner.”

“You quit?”

“I was let go.”

Prissy made a noise of distress, shook her head. “Times are tough all over. I’m guessing more people are planning their own weddings on a shoestring budget, huh?”

“They are,” Mariah said, happy that Prissy didn’t ask more questions about why she’d gotten fired.

“So, what in the heck are you doin’ in Jubilee?”

“My father passed away and left me Stone Creek Ranch.”

Prissy gasped, splayed a palm across her chest. “You’re Dutch’s daughter?”

Mariah nodded.

“Oh my Lord, honey, let me give you a hug. You poor thing. It must have tore you right up that you couldn’t make the funeral. Paul and I were there. It was really nice. Half the town got up and said kind words.”

The next thing she knew, Prissy was enveloping her in a strawberry-scented hug. Mariah wasn’t much of a hugger, but Prissy sure was. She squeezed her tight. Awkwardly, Mariah patted Prissy’s shoulder blades.

Prissy pulled back, dabbed at the tears in her eyes. “It’s Mariah, right?”

“Yes.”

“Your daddy, he talked about you every time he came into the store. I know he’d be so proud that you came home.”

“Jubilee’s not my home.”

Prissy waved a hand. “ ’Course it is. Now that you own Stone Creek.”

“I’m selling it back to Joe Daniels.” She didn’t know why she was telling Prissy this.

“Oh that Joe.” Prissy sighed. “Isn’t he gorgeous? Like Jubilee’s version of a black-haired Brad Pitt. Except younger and sexier. It’s so sad about his wife. He and Becca were a dream couple. They looked like figurines on top of a wedding cake. They were so cute together you could just eat ’em up with a long-handled spoon.”

“Sounds . . . cannibalistic.”

Prissy’s high-pitched laugh resembled squealing bus brakes. “You’re so funny. Seriously though, before he hooked up with Becca, that rascally Joe was a real ladies’ man. But once he was with her, he never even looked at another woman. She was his world. And then Becca goes and gets herself killed.”

Morbid curiosity took hold of her and Mariah couldn’t stop herself from asking, “How did it happen?”

“It was so sad. She was barrel racing at PRCA rodeo in Duncan, Oklahoma. She’d been burning up the circuit, was all set to win the finals again like she’d done the year before, when her horse stumbled at top speed and threw her out of the saddle. She landed—
boom
.” Prissy smacked her palms together. “Right on the top of her head. Broke her spine like Christopher Reeve, but she died on the way to the hospital. Just one of those horrible freak accidents.”

Mariah felt as if all the blood had drained from her head to her feet. She thought of Joe and what he’d suffered, and her heart wrenched. She couldn’t begin to imagine the level of his grief. “That’s so awful.”

“A bunch of us thought he might do something stupid.”

“Like suicide?” Mariah whispered.

Prissy nodded solemnly. “They were so in love. It was that special kind of magic, you know,” Prissy said. “Like me and Paul. First time we laid eyes on each other, we both just
knew
. It’s killing me that Paul’s going to the Middle East, but he keeps telling me that freedom isn’t free. Somebody has to fight for it. I just don’t know why it has to be him.”

The cowbell over the front door tinkled.

“ ’Scuse me a minute,” Prissy said, and bounded for the front door.

Mariah looked at the purses and belts and buckles strewn across the counter where Prissy had been stacking them.

“Well, speak of the devil,” Prissy boomed to the new customer. “We were just talkin’ ’bout you.”

“We?” Joe said.

The sound of Joe’s rich, dark voice sent an excited shiver over her skin, and Mariah had an impulse to run right out the back door. She just might have done it too, if Prissy hadn’t shown up, trolling Joe behind her much as she’d done with Mariah earlier.

“Ta-da,” Prissy said. “Your new neighbor is on a shopping spree too.”

“Hello,” Joe said, his gaze meeting Mariah’s.

She raised a hand, smiled faintly.

“What were you looking for?” Prissy asked him.

“I need some new chaps. She Devil got me with her horn and split my old chaps right up the leg.”

“She Devil?” Mariah arched an eyebrow.

“An ornery Brahma I own,” Joe explained. “She doesn’t take well to being cut by Miracle. Those two get along like Tom and Jerry.”

“Miracle bested her I’m sure,” Prissy said.

“He did, but She Devil took it out on me.”

“Let me just go find those chaps. Same kind as before?”

“Yep.”

“Be right back.” Prissy disappeared.

“So,” Joe said, resting his arm on a support column that was very close to where Mariah stood. She could feel his radiating body heat, his mouth crooked like a question mark. “You decided to go country.”

“It was an issue of survival. Conform or be mocked.”

He tilted his cowboy hat down lower on his brow and leveled her a cocky stare. “You need any help?”

“Prissy’s taking care of me.”

Joe lowered his voice. “About that, you might want to reconsider. Prissy’s taste can be a bit . . .”

“Over the top?”

“I wasn’t going to say it, but yeah.” His grin could drop a buckle bunny at fifty paces. Cassie used to say the same thing about Dutch. Mariah wondered for the first time if her mother had been a buckle bunny in her youth.

Joe was standing too close. That alpha man thing. Closing in. Mariah hugged herself, putting her arms up for protection.

Against what? An outrageous smile?

But what got to her, what really screwed with her equilibrium, was that on the other side of the teasing smile, she knew the pain he struggled so hard to hide. Two sentences scrolled through her mind. One was sympathetic:
Hands off he’s a widower
—the other was pure selfishness:
Wonder what he tastes like.
That last thought gave her an electrical jolt.

Joe leaned over, and for one crazy moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. Her breath made a rattling sound in her lungs.

He didn’t kiss her, just reached overhand to pluck a black, broad-brimmed Stetson off the rack behind her. Her limbs went liquid as his sexy scent surrounded her. Now why was she wanting him to kiss her?

Because he’s a hottie.

So what? She’d never been so bowled over by a man’s looks before. Why him? Why now?

It was the widower mystique. Had to be. Blame it on her all-time favorite movie,
Sleepless in Seattle
.

“Here,” Joe said, and settled the cowboy hat on her head. “Try this.”

Mariah felt like a giant dork and reached to doff the hat, but Joe’s words stopped her.

“You look good.”

She swallowed against the heat of his gaze. The man had the uncanny ability to steal every rational thought in her head with a single glance. Nervously, she ran her tongue over her bottom lip. “You’re not just saying that to flatter me?”

“Look.” He took her by the shoulders and turned her to face an oval mirror hung on the wall beside the hat shelf.

The weight of his hands felt solid. Real. Honest.

Mariah thought of the men she’d dated in Chicago. Businessmen more concerned with their bottom line than anything else. She realized she’d never dated a man who was good with his hands. For the most part, she’d gone from cerebral types, drawn to the kind of man that was the antithesis to Dutch.

But Joe . . . Joe was just like her father. Passionate about horses. Good with his hands. Easy to be with. Was he as equally unreliable as Dutch? That thought put the brakes on her runaway fantasies.

“See,” Joe murmured, his lips right next to her ear. His breath warmed her skin. She felt so many things she shouldn’t be feeling. Desire, need, hope. Joe Daniels wasn’t the answer to her problems, but damn if she couldn’t help wondering if he could be the answer to her long, lonely nights. He took her chin in his palm and raised her head.

Mariah met her own gaze in the mirror, startled at the cowgirl who looked back at her. Dressed in the black Stetson, she looked the part. That made her feel immeasurably better. She’d always been good at playing the part. Accomplished at donning the costume of whatever role she assumed. But somehow this was . . .